Street fight in Hyannis

In an effort to help steer street people out of town, Hyannis merchants are pushing for a Capewide solution for homelessness.

PATRICK CASSIDY

HYANNIS — Warren Smith grew up just over the Cape Cod Canal in Wareham.

Smith, 49, worked at BJ's Wholesale Club in Hyannis when it first opened four years ago. But after he lost his job and his home, he joined the ranks of the homeless on the streets of the Cape's de facto city, he said yesterday.

"For Cape Cod, it's ridiculous," Smith said as he sat on a sun-dappled bench in the middle of the Hyannis Town Green with about a half dozen other homeless men and women seated on the grass nearby. "It seems like all they're doing is for the tourists."

Homeless people often feel persecuted by businesses and police, Smith and his friends said.

"They don't want the homeless people in town," said 53-year-old Paula Zambruski.

The clash between Hyannis merchants and the homeless who wander the commercial hub's Main Street area will be the focus of a meeting Tuesday night at the Federated Church of Hyannis.

The event, sponsored by the Hyannis Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Hyannis Civic Association and the Hyannis Main Street Business Improvement District, is intended to bring social service providers and business leaders together so they can understand each other better, according to organizers.

"The one problem that is the most immediate and of most concern is the behavior of what we call street people," said Cynthia Cole, executive director of the Business Improvement District.

"We want to make it very clear that we are not pointing the finger at homeless people," she said, distinguishing between troublemakers of all stripes and homeless people who don't cause trouble.

"We're walking the fine line," Barnstable Police Chief Paul McDonald said of the community's response to the homeless. While police are tasked with helping the homeless, they also practice zero tolerance when it comes to activities such as drug use and public urination, he said.

Damage from troublemakers on the street can create havoc on neatly laid business plans, according to business owners.

"I'm pretty much in the hell zone," said Joe Dunn, co-owner of the Island Merchant, a restaurant on the east end of Main Street. "Behind the Dumpsters is where they live. My morning consists of coming in and cleaning up their beer bottles."

Conditions downtown are better since the start of increased police patrols and ongoing construction at the nearby Federated Church that cut off access to alleys and Dumpsters, but Dunn said he still sees problems in the area.

"If you talk about it with certain groups, they think you're anti-homeless," Dunn said. "I tend not to blame the homeless."

Immigrants who used to live in town have left because of the weak dollar and stumbling economy, he said, and absentee landlords replaced them with tenants who have substance-abuse problems and that has caused trouble on the street.

It is difficult to publicize the complex issues involved in local street crime because merchants do not want to deter visitors, Dunn said, but Hyannis businesses decided recently they could no longer shoulder problems that they believe are Capewide.

Centralizing the Cape's social services, such as programs for the homeless, in Hyannis doesn't serve anyone's interests, Cole said.

"It's not working, obviously, for the merchants. It's not working for the residents. And we believe it is not working for the clients," she said.

Other Cape towns should do more to provide social services in their communities, she said. On this point, Cole and advocates for the homeless appear to agree.

"We are a progressive community," said Alan Burt, executive director for the Homeless Not Hopeless housing program in Hyannis. "I certainly would agree that there are a number of communities that could be doing more."

Burt said the assertion that social-service programs in Hyannis attract trouble is misplaced, however.

Homeless people are a small percentage of the people in town who cause problems, he said.

Although the sun was warm yesterday, the homeless men and women were already thinking about a problem they faced in the night ahead.